


Comes Round Again

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-13
Updated: 2007-02-13
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: Bruce wasn't their first choice for guardian, but he's all Lian has left.





	Comes Round Again

**Author's Note:**

> _“Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ~~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi_

They’d been a family for three years, Batman reluctantly thinks as he sits in the Cave, watching Superman struggle through explaining the hows and whys of the battle that had cost Nightwing’s entire team their lives. And though his ears hear the weary Kryptonian’s pride in Nightwing’s work mixed with the anguish, Batman can’t help but remember two Thanksgivings reluctantly spent in New York, and the snow fights in the front of the Manor that had made Alfred so happy.

Batman supposes that Alfred will never be happy again.

The criminals were taken down, too, Superman tells him. Batman is . . glad that his son’s efforts weren’t in vain, but his mind wanders, remembering Arsenal and Nightwing bouncing down the steps of the Manor with all the maturity of Speedy and _Robin._ He’d been foolish then, but not so foolish as to miss the happiness that Dick had found with Harper and the child. Whatever else Batman might ever have said about Harper, the man had made Dick happy in the selfless kind of way that no one else ever had. And for that, Batman had been grateful.

Batman wishes he’d told him that, when he’d still had the chance.

He watches Superman struggle to contain his own tears, no doubt for Bruce’s sake, as Batman remembers Saturday morning games of _I Spy_ between the youngest Harper and Tim.

He worries about the child, one who shares traits with all three of his sons. Because now the little girl who so politely critiqued his aim is going to grow up with the loss of both her fathers, her aunt, and her uncle. All she has left, he thinks bitterly, is himself and a grandfather who did almost as bad a job parenting as Batman did.

She’s only eight.

He will grieve his son, of that he has no choice. But it will wait until long after Superman has left. After Batman has told Robin that the final piece of childhood happiness has been taken away from him forever. After the girl is taken care of.

"Who’s going to take care of her?" he asks, interrupting Superman in mid-sentence. There are no words to describe the grief he has for the loss of his son; the anguish runs deeper than any Batman has known since he’d gotten up off of his knees in the alley where his parents had fallen. Speaking of his pain doesn’t do any more good than regretting all the times he didn’t speak when he should have, or all the times he did speak when he shouldn’t have.

For the child, however, he has words. They aren’t kind ones, and later Batman will be glad that only _Clark_ heard them. "Their foolishness made her an orphan. Their stupidity in choosing their team put all of her family in jeopardy. Who‘s going to take care of her now?"

Superman’s frown might have come close to reproach, if it hadn’t still had the tell-tale signs of grief for the smiling boy with whom the Kryptonian had taken flying purely because the boy had enjoyed the sensation.

No duty. No mission. No responsibility. No lessons to be learned. Batman wonders if Superman knows how lucky he is to have those memories.

"Bruce," the other man says quietly. "Dick and Roy picked you."

He wasn’t their first choice, of that Batman is aware, even without Clark telling him. But the first contingency plan died alongside both parents, as did the second. He wonders what those arguments must have been like between his son and the man Dick called soulmate. When it came down to himself or Ollie, Batman wonders what sins of Green Arrow were dredged up to make Batman seem like the better choice.

Whatever they might have been, the two . . . soon to be three . . . cases for fallen Robins prompt an immediate reaction. "No."

"Why not?"

Harvey. Jason. Stephanie. Cass. _Dick._ "She still has nightmares," he says quietly, the calm in his voice angering the part of him that wants nothing more than to send Clark away so the grieving can begin. "She went through a bad spell a few years ago. Sometimes she still wakes up in the middle of the night screaming. This. . . " Is only going to insure that the nightmares never went away. And for the good of whatever sanity Tim still needs him to possess, Batman doesn’t remember the nights his son spent comforting away those nightmares.

"No one knows nightmares better than Batman," Clark reminds with the kind of honesty the other man hates him for. The truth hurts, Batman thinks tritely. Even if it’s half-truths. Because three times he’d thought he could make the nightmares go away, and twice he’s failed. He has no doubt that when he tells Robin that his big brother is dead, he will have to add another failure to the list.

The kid deserves better than that. They all did, but especially the one that was loved by Dick as a father loves his own. "I _can’t._ "

The shoulders square and Superman‘s anger replaces his sorrow. "It was the last thing Dick asked of you. How can you _not?_ "

He should still say no. But Superman had offered the one argument he couldn’t counter. In his mind, Batman sees a smiling boy hanging upside down from the armchair of the living room‘s sofa. There’s a flash of green and red as the boy shifts positions and a smirk as he taunts Batman with a cheerfulness that will probably never live in the Manor again. _"I told you he was good. You always underestimated that."_

"Dick always did say I underestimated your intelligence," Batman says softly. "I guess he was right."

Superman has won arguments before. Usually, Batman has to suffer through an annoyingly self-satisfied smirk from the Boy Scout. Today, it doesn’t come. Batman misses it.

Today, all Superman does is lay a compassionate hand on his shoulder. Batman wants to be angry at the way the Kryptonian’s hand doesn’t shake, because perfect muscle control needed or not, Dick worshiped the man. Dick deserves the kind of grief that Superman’s hands don’t show.

Batman would be angry, perhaps, if not for his own hands clinched motionlessly at his side.

"She’s. . . still with the nanny," Superman says softly.

"She’s not been told?"

"No. You . . .and Ollie . . . were the first ones to know."

Through his own grief, Batman is concerned with the enormity of the loss that Queen has faced. The man. . .the man who comforted him over Jason’s turn to the wrong side did not deserve the loss of his soulmate. The man who had learned from the mistakes he had made the first time around did not deserve to lose two sons. And a man that is as open with his feelings as Queen has always been . . . Batman does not envy either his position nor that of the man the League surely sent to give the news. "I’m going to get the kid. You go to Star City and help Hal deal with Oliver."

"Bruce -"

"Tell him to pull himself together. We’re all Lian has left. The child needs us."

The hand reluctantly leaves Batman’s shoulder. "Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?"

"No. No child should have Superman tell them their parents are never coming back to them."

"She shouldn’t have to hear it from you either," Superman says unnecessarily.

No, she shouldn’t. Because, in a perfect world, mommies and daddies don’t go away. In a good world, four of the world’s best and brightest superheroes don’t have their lives cut short by a handful of scum. In a fair world, his happy blue-eyed boy would have been allowed to watch Lian’s children play in the rocking chair next to his mate with the occasional visit from Aunt Dinah and Uncle Connor.

But Batman’s world is none of those things.

"It won’t be the first painful thing she hears from me," Batman tells him. "After all, we’re family."

Superman nods, and leaves, somewhat reluctantly. Batman watches him go for as long as the security cameras allow, pushing down the sorrow forever more associated with flight.

Then he goes upstairs and tells Tim and Alfred.

Tim leaves before Batman is finished with the details; Batman mourns the loss of the child that grieved so openly in front of him at Jack Drake’s passing.

_//Never again.//_

Alfred looks older than Batman can recall him looking before, but the man Bruce has always relied on focuses on preparations for the child. Batman is grateful for it; it allows him to focus on her as well. As he leaves the Manor and heads for New York, Alfred is preparing a permanent room for the newest addition to their family.

Lian’s room is three doors down from Dick’s old room and directly across the hall from the one that had belonged to Jason, but Batman doesn’t think of that. There are too many other details to worry about.

Namely, he is distracted by Bruce’s search for the right way to break the news that will shatter whatever remaining innocence his granddaughter has left.


End file.
